She stops beside him. A big, stunning voice, made for the opera. Jiro would love this—there’s a scene in the book where he’s walking down the street and hears a woman singing in the shower. He stops and listens to the entire song. After a while, the man pokes his head out from under the hood and looks at her, curious, puzzled, before he dismisses Hanne, who has just been standing there, staring at him mutely. “Bunch of wackos in this town.”
Still, she smiles at him. Pasted onto the sidewalk, leaves, the color of dirt; sheets of newspaper scuttling down the street; a man in a suit, his shirt robin’s-egg blue. Kireina, beautiful, she murmurs, beautiful. She walks slowly, deliberately, aware of the sidewalk, the cracks and bumps, the dips and drops. Aware now of how easy it is to fall.
In the brightly lit lobby of her apartment building, she even lets her neighbor’s collie press his wet black nose on her dress, leaving a long smear. “I’m so sorry,” says the neighbor, whose blue-tinted hair seems remarkable today.
Smiling, Hanne strokes the dog’s head. “What a lovely dog,” she says. “She must keep you company.”
The neighbor leans toward Hanne and tilts her ear. “Are you feeling all right, Ms. Schubert?” Her voice wavers and warbles with age. “I didn’t understand a word you just said.”
She forgot. She can’t speak to her neighbors. Language, she remembers her mother telling her when she was a girl, is the umbilical cord to other humans.
By the time she returns to her apartment, she has a slight headache. Her brain, that convoluted gray mass, feels tender, like a small nocturnal animal that has been thrust into the sun. She sits at the kitchen table, watching Tomas attack an empty cardboard box with scissors. He thought he’d be useful, he says. He’s replaced the light bulbs in the hallway, swept away cobwebs in the corners of her rooms, put oil on the bolt of a squeaky cupboard. Is there anything else he can do?
“There was a man singing, a beautiful voice, that man,” she says in Japanese. “Baritone that swung into tenor.”
“Just a state of ecstasy,” he says, as he scissors through the side of the box. “The etymology of the Greek word,” he reminds her, as if her fall had stripped her of more than her English, “being outside oneself. What you’re experiencing is a complete forgetting of the past and future; you’re conscious of only the present instant. I read about it somewhere.”
One side of the box is cut in half. “Probably something to do with endorphins.” He steps on it and crushes it. “Or maybe serotonin. I forget all the chemistry of the brain these days.” He goes on interpreting and speculating about the possible reasons for her ecstasy—maybe something she ate, or the lighting outside, or some medicine they gave her—and as the list grows longer, she feels her ecstasy, if that’s the right name for it, dissolve.
She’s grateful when his cell phone rings. She fixes herself a coffee and rubs her temples. As he paces the living room, his voice rises and falls, circling around the word “contract.” When he finishes the call, he says he should probably leave soon. Maybe tomorrow morning. “Do you think you’ll be all right?”
For a moment, she feels cold panic. How will she negotiate this city speaking only Japanese? David doesn’t speak it. Who will keep her company? But she can’t ask her son to put his life on hold. He’s done more than enough. “Absolutely.”
She asks Tomas to call David—a friend, she says—to tell him what happened to her. “Tell him there’s no need for concern. I’m on the mend.” Tomas dials the number and leaves a message. And then could he please call the university and let them know at least for the foreseeable future, she will not be able to teach Japanese. She knows her students; they require a professor who can explain things over and over in English.
“I don’t want you here alone,” he says, frowning. “I’ll arrange for a nurse.”
“There’s no need. Really, Tomas.”
He reminds her to check in with her doctor.
She agrees to do just that. He nods absentmindedly.
In the morning, he slips into his coat, snaps shut his briefcase, no, no breakfast, tells her he’s called a taxi and should head to the lobby.
He reaches for the door.
“Tomas.”
He pauses.
“Any word from Brigitte?”
“No. Call if you need anything,” then he closes the front door.
She looks around her empty apartment. There on the side table, Tomas forgot his yellow legal notepad. Not words, but a doodle, a man on his back, his legs lifted up in the air. At first she feels a flush of embarrassment, thinking she’s intruded on his fantasy life. But the image reminds her of something else: Picasso’s painting of a man on his back eating watermelon. Was her son contemplating delight? Her ecstatic delight?
With her son no longer here making calls, his voice scaling peaks of excitement, then sliding down into a hushed reassurance, his hard heels smacking the hardwood floors, his head bowed reverently over a notepad, his long fingers running through his inky black hair, there is only deathly quiet.
She hurries down the hall to the elevator. “Hurry up,” she murmurs as it descends. She runs across the marble floor of the lobby, but by the time she pushes through the heavy glass doors, he is gone. Whisked away in a yellow taxi. What greets her is the rush of traffic, music blaring from god knows where, people hurrying by on their way to work, as if pushed along by a strong wind. She stands in the lobby doorway, trying to catch her breath, hoping to spot him, wave him back, one foot in, the other out. She glances down. How unlike her; she is standing in the foyer barefoot.
The next day, she cuts her morning walk short, deciding against a trek across the bridge in the fog, with the wet gray clinging to her. And she doesn’t stop by Cecilia’s Bakery because she doesn’t want to dumbly point to her selection and nod like an idiot—yes, yes, that’s the one. Cecilia, with the lines on her face filled with flour, will ask what happened in her heavy accent, and Hanne will be reduced to more hand signals or jotting everything down.
By the time she gets home, she’s chilled to the bone. She picks up the phone to call David. Then remembers she can’t. Fortunately, he comes by at noon. She can see he’s startled by her appearance. Does she look that bad? He studies her, then looks away, then sneaks another glance before he walks into the foyer and announces in a voice deliberately loud and upbeat that he has brought a homemade meal of rosemary chicken, mashed potatoes, and salad. “I never claimed the English were good cooks,” he says. “But, ta-da.”
She smiles, nods, grabs a notepad and writes: It smells delicious. Thank you.
“How are you?”
Doing better. It’s so nice to have your company.
He puts together a plate of food for her, then serves himself. For a while, they try to converse with David asking questions, and she responding via her notepad. But the conversation moves slowly, like drips from a faucet. He launches into a monologue, telling her about school, a tedious faculty meeting, his wonderful students, a concert he attended, his visit to the Monet exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. She nods, smiles, gestures with her hands. About mid-way through the chicken, he runs out of stories and steam. A long interval of awkwardness settles over them. The lunch, she knows, is exhausting. For him. For her.
When they make love, it’s not the same. A cotton layer has wrapped tightly around her, dulling her senses. She is just going through the motions. He must sense it because afterwards, he doesn’t lounge around in bed. “Call me—” then he catches himself. He says he has to go to Sacramento for one of his kids’ soccer tournaments. When he returns in a couple of days, he’ll stop by, take her out to dinner.
I’d like that, she writes on a paper. She refrains from writing Please don’t forget.
She can’t sleep. Around midnight, half dazed, she steps into the living room, stretching her back to untangle the knots. The lighting seems different, brighter, a strange yellow glow. It takes her a moment to realize she’s failed to perform her nightly ritual of shut
ting her curtains. Through her big wall of windows, her life is on display to whoever wants to peer in. She hurries over to shut them, but just as she’s about to do so, she glances straight into an apartment across the street, where a woman in a blue dress is chasing a man around a couch. Or maybe he is chasing her. Around they go. The woman is barefoot and tosses her head back, laughing, exposing the long line of her pale throat. The man is running and now unbuttoning his white shirt, flinging it into the air, and it sails beyond the couch, as if caught in an invisible wind, and it floats onto a chair. She should look away, shut her curtains, but will he catch her?—she’s decided he is chasing her—and he does, and now they tumble onto the couch, their arms and legs entangled, their bodies glued together. No one is watching her—it’s she who is watching them. She yanks closed the curtains.
Four days go by and she slips into a great hole of silence. She can’t while away the hours reading, because she’s unable to focus on words without ushering in a headache. The doctor explained it, but she didn’t quite understand. She only clung to his final phrase—that, too, should return. Some day. She’d give anything to have the demands and absorption of her work, the reassurance of a new manuscript to translate.
When there’s a firm knock on the door, she nearly runs to answer it. She’s expecting David. Thank God. Finally back from his trip. A woman with straight black hair, as thin as a wire, is standing there in a skimpy black skirt, holding a fistful of balloons, one hip provocatively thrust forward. She’s tottering on four-inch heels, shoes that are surprisingly large to accommodate the woman’s surprisingly large feet. A tight red top accentuates her big breasts, but black fishnet stockings sag loosely on her rail-thin legs.
A trollop, thinks Hanne, frowning her disapproval. Who in the condo association would order such a woman? Probably that man on the ninth floor with the huge paunch and greasy hair, who has a permanent ring of sweat gleaming underneath his eyes. Hanne grabs a paper and pencil. You have the wrong apartment.
Pink foundation covers the woman’s face, and her black eyeliner is so thick the effect is raccoonish. Garish red lips compete with the eyeliner, and Hanne’s eyes dart back and forth, from eyes to mouth, as if both exaggerated features are clamoring for her attention. It’s hard to see, let alone fathom the real face underneath all that gunk, though Hanne imagines this woman, surely a prostitute, is not much older than twenty. A drug addict too, thinks Hanne, too thin, unkempt, malnourished.
Snapping her gum, the woman runs her hand up and down the doorframe, as if stroking velvet, her charm bracelet jingling on her skeletal wrist. She glances at the door number, then the card in her hand, and, shaking her head, grins her slash-mouth. “Nope.”
Are you sure? she scribbles.
“Hanne Schubert?” She lurches toward Hanne, who takes a quick step back.
You’re not coming in.
The woman shrugs her bony shoulders to her ears. “Suit yourself.” Her voice is low, grating, with a hint of an accent—Bulgarian?—and her tone amused. “Most people don’t want it in the hallway.”
From the streets, thinks Hanne, getting a whiff of the woman, who smells unwashed, oily. Now Hanne sees that the woman’s foundation reaches only to her jaw line; her neck is ghostly white, as white as death. There is something familiar about the woman. Who sent you?
Looking straight at Hanne with hard angry eyes, as if daring her to do something, say something more, the woman spits her gum into a wrapper, clears her throat and begins to sing a song in perfect beautiful German. It’s the lullaby her mother sang to her as a child. Hanne can still hear her mother’s heels clicking across the wood floor as she came to Hanne’s bedroom to tuck her in, smooth down the white quilt, and sing to her. It was the moment Hanne waited for all day. It didn’t happen often, her mother too busy. But when it did, her mother’s face came so close, wisps of her blond hair tickling Hanne’s face, her red-wine breath, her voice, magically beautiful, singing, Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf. Der Vater Hut’t die Schaf. Die Mutter schuttelt’s Baumelein, Da fallt herab ein Traumelein. Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf! Sleep, baby, sleep. Your father tends the sheep. Your mother shakes the branches small, Lovely dreams in showers fall. Sleep, baby, sleep.
Hanne only remembers that verse, and perhaps that was all there was. The song and the presence of her mother swiftly delivered her into the arms of Morpheus, where she was held in the loveliest dreams. For a moment, Hanne closes her eyes, letting the song spill over her. When she opens them, she hardly knows where she is. But this girl—this young woman, with her black hair, her brown eyes faintly slanted, her big feet, reminds Hanne of her daughter. Brigitte, as a teenager.
Hanne tries to make the woman stop, but she keeps singing, her voice flatter, angrier. German, one of Brigitte’s first languages. She spoke it with a perfect accent.
When the girl finishes singing, she says, “Here you go, lady.” And as she gives Hanne the balloons, their hands briefly touch. “See ya,” she says, baring her teeth, a streak of red lipstick marring her front tooth. The sarcasm lingers in the air, like a bad smell.
Hanne watches the girl saunter toward the elevator, hips swaying like a pendulum, not bothering to turn around. The farther she walks, the jerkier her gait becomes, as if she’s having trouble negotiating high heels on the nubby carpet. Before Hanne can decide what else to do, she is gone. Hanne stands there, nothing in focus, the hallway rug a smear of slate blue. In her mind, she repeats the girl’s phrase like an incantation, with the same accent, the same guttural growl, “See ya.”
She looks over at the balloons in her hand and sees a small card attached to the one of the ribbons. Slowly she closes the door, locks it, and opens the card.
Welcome home! Glad you’re out of the hospital. Love, Tomas, Anne, Sasha and Irene.
Hanne stands in the front hallway of her apartment and watches her hand release the balloons. They drift up, hit the ceiling, bounce off, then up again, where they stay glued. She slowly makes her way into the living room, as if tangled in a dream.
The wall that is all windows casts the day’s light across a large open space, with maple wood floors, a white sofa, two white chairs, and a glass coffee table. Nowhere is there clutter, nothing extra, everything open, bare, pared down. A spaciousness that allows room to think, that was the intention behind the design. She can see it that way, but also another way. It looks uninhabited, an empty room staged with just enough furniture to persuade a prospective buyer to make the purchase. Who lives here?
She stands so close to the big window that her breath fogs a small circle. A handful of miniature people on the sidewalk, someone walking a small skittish dog. Cars and a yellow taxi zoom by. Six hundred souls live on this block, eating, shitting, sleeping, making love, and somewhere in this city a new soul is arriving, another departing. She leans her forehead on the cold glass, humming the German lullaby underneath her breath, wordlessly, until she catches herself doing so and makes herself stop.
Two more days go by and her loneliness has taken on sharp edges. Every sound—the floor creaking, a door closing, laughter drifting up from the street—seems loud and mocking. She waits a day, then breaks down and calls Tomas. She asks if he’d do her a big favor and phone David for her.
“Of course, Mom. How are you?”
“Better.”
“Good. You sound good. Got the balloons?”
“Yes, thank you. And her German was perfect.”
“Glad to hear it worked out.”
Tomas puts her on hold and dials David. She looks down at her nightgown. Lunch time and she still hasn’t dressed. Tomas comes back on the line. “He wasn’t there. I left him a message to call you.”
A chill runs through her along with a vision of her future—more of the same bleak silence. But she won’t perish from that.
“Is there anyone else I can call?”
She asks him to call the publisher and find out what’s happening with the translation. He calls her back ten minutes later. Kobayashi
hasn’t gotten back to the publisher. They aren’t sure what’s going on.
“Do you want me to fly out again?” he says.
She can hear a hint of reluctance in his voice. “I’m fine. I’ve got plenty to do.” An entire closet of old clothes to sort through. She’ll start her spring cleaning early.
The next day, when the unbearable silence bears down on her, when the highlight of her day is riding the elevator to the lobby to check her mailbox, which is empty, when David sends an e-mail apologizing, he’s been stuck at home with two sick kids and now he’s come down with something, she calls the Japanese Ministry of Culture. She knows it’s short notice, but if it’s at all possible, if they still have room, she’d like to be on their panel of speakers for the conference she’d turned down earlier. Her schedule now allows it. “It sounds so interesting,” she says, hoping her tone isn’t too eager.
“One moment please,” says the woman on the phone.
Hanne refrains from pleading.
The woman says, in fact, they just had a cancellation. One of the speakers has a family emergency in London. Hanne has to stop herself from shouting with delight. The Ministry will secure her airfare, accommodations, and meals, as well as an honorarium.
“The Ministry is quite honored to have you attend,” she says. “We are so happy.”
“I’m so happy,” says Hanne, reveling in the sound of her own voice. She asks about the weather and nearby restaurants within walking distance of the hotel. And shopping. What boutiques and specialty shops would she recommend? “I’m so looking forward to this.”
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